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Races measured short
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Trafford 10k now found to be 100m short, and more to come. All in NW England.
http://coursemeasurement.org.uk/investigations/shortcalcourseinvestigation.htm
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Comments
Bloody Hell, one 10k was 1% short; that's a huge amount!
They should absolutely make sure this doesn't happen again.
Is there an acceptable margin of error?
No. There is no margin of "short" error that is acceptable. All the allowable measurement tolerance is positive. I can't remember what that amount is... but I think the course can be up 10m long for a 10K race.
And that's a long list of races that look like they're going to be declared short!
Hopefully they come up with a ruling that allows people keep their times, with some small adjustment. I understand that London is accepting that Manchester 2015 is recognised for GFA - but adding to people's times to account for the short distance. If I had a PB in any of those races, I would just add X% to them and not worry any further... but it would be nice to see them do this on Powerof10 and any official records too.
So they've been using an incorrect calibration course since 2003?
There's no way that's going to happen, because adding any percentage to a time can never be considered an official time. Po10 will just mark the results as having been run on a short course and be done with.
Indeed, the distance and time you ran are the distance and time you ran. Once you start getting into theoreticals, no matter how marginal, it's a slippery slope. It's a different thing if you're talking qualification times, because you can just take an allowance of 30s for instance and say anyone under that is in, but you can't go round changing the actual results.
be gutted if you did most of your racing in that area
well...yeah!
Trafford 10k attracted a lot of decent runners as was seen as a well organised and fast course. It had loads going sub 30mins this year. Oh dear.
Well that's pretty bad news! Question marks over my HM and 10K PB.
There's 5 or 6 notable races on that list attracting quality fields so there'll be lots affected.
It is fair comment to say it's a slippery slope and you can't just add percentages... but it depends how serious you're taking this and what the purpose of the PB is.
The vast majority of us are just bog standard - or maybe good standard club runners. So does it really matter? I ran Manchester 2015 and can estimate with 99% percent certainty, a realistic adjusted time for that marathon - to within 20 or 30 seconds (probably much closer). I finished strongly but I'll err on the conservative side and that's the time I'll tell people I got. As it happens, it's not a PB, but if it was, I'd still count that adjusted time as my PB.
Maybe some people will strike that 26.1 mile run from their record and not count it as a completed marathon, but I won't be one of them.
if you start changing PB's fordistance then would you change it down if your garmin measures long....
maybe change it to reflect the weather....or the fcat that you had to stop for a pee....
you could adjust it as it was a hilly course or because the official results just showed gun time.....
maybe you had a cold the weak before or was carrying an extra stone..
I PB and time is only there if it is official otherwise you might just as make up any time you fancy
Brilliantly argued
If you had dedicated a whole year to running sub-3 in your fourth and final lifetime marathon at Liverpool 2014... and achieved a 30 minute PB of 2 hours 52 mins.... and then you find they went back to do an official re-measure as a result of the current debacle, and found the Liverpool course to be one metre short...
Then when making small talk at a party and someone asks you how many marathons have you done, would you say that you'd done three? Would you say that your PB was 3:22? For the sake of one metre? Or even 1cm if we want to go there.
For a social runner, I don't think many people would think a single metre is worth worrying about. On the other hand, if it had been ten miles short, nobody would count that as a marathon... And so (with the exception of world championship / world record runners) we're looking at a grey area... and each deciding where a line should be drawn.
For me, 1 metre wouldn't worry me. Neither would 10m, although I would be adding 5 seconds to my time when chatting about my marathon finish times with friends. Manchester was 380m short and for me, that takes me in to uncomfortable territory, but I was running strongly at the finish and when discussing my running record, I'll count it a marathon and I'll probably round up the time by two and a half minutes if the conversation goes that way and if anyone wants to discuss the details, I will.
I just thought of another parallel in sport. In cricket, the cricket community came together to decide on the best way to deal with matches affected by the weather. For example, if one team scores 200 runs, and their opponents are replying with a score of 150 for 3 with 6 overs remaining when rain ends play, then the "Duckworth-Lewis" calculation method is used to find the winner - based on how likely the second team was to reach 201 with those remaining batsmen to come, if those 6 remaining overs had been possible.
That's not perfect but it offers an agreed solution to a problem - much better than just having match abandoned.
I'd do the same sort of thing for social / club runners, to deal with officially accredited distance courses that turn out to be short - which does happen several times a year for one reason or another (usually failure to set out cones and turning points in the right place on the day). It obviously would not deal with "championship" situations or national records... but just be there for club runners to use if the race-organisation cocks up.
"Rules" might include
Races over 20 miles because of their different nature. I'd have running clubs / running bodies coming together to get consensus on these limits.
Just like Duckworth-Lewis, this wouldn't be perfect, but it would be easy to have a calculator, similar to the age-grading calculators on a website and although a "short-course-adjusted time" won't be needed often, I think it would help in these circumstances. People sacrifice for months to prepare for a marathon (for example) and if a course does turn out to be a few metres short, it would be good for the running community to have an agreed way forward other than to simply obliterate the race from history.
Maybe it would be better to focus on improving the course length accreditation process rather than implement some confusing back calculation to correct times.
Duckworth-Lewis is probably the most confusing and least liked thing in limited overs cricket. There is no way something similar should be implemented in running. Sorry Nose Nowt.
Add together my halves and my full marathons, I've run less than 20 and 3 of them have officially been declared short. One for poor calibration (Manchester) and two for incorrect placement of turning points. Maybe I've been exceptionally unlucky but I doubt it.
If you'd ran your only sub-2:30 marathon on 10 metres short, you would accept that you never ran a sub-2:30 marathon? Or that you never even completed a marathon that day?
Maybe not "Duckworth Lewis" but I think we should find consensus on what to do in these situations, because short courses will happen year-in, year-out. And as things stand, some people would ignore the effect of a short course, some would be like Seren and say that they never completed a marathon that day and some would say they completed one, but would add on some time to account for the extra 10 or 100 metres or whatever.
Oh, and HA77. I don't agree about your view of D-L in cricket either!!.
It might be pretty confusing, and everyone raises their eyebrows and scratches their heads a bit, but I think it's very well liked. In the old days, you could be chasing a total of 250 in 50 overs... and you could be 199 for 0 after 40 overs and you'd have lost because you were behind the run rate of 5 per over. But if you were 201 for 9 you'd win!!
Duckworth-Lewis is technically a very good system and has made the game much better. It would benefit from being much more transparent, and the algorithm might need tweaking from time to time, but definitely something to keep.
I agree D-L is probably the best solution in cricket but I wouldn't say it's liked. I'd say most people are disappointed when D-L comes into play.
If I could run a sub 2:30 marathon I wouldn't care if it was 10m short and not recorded as an official time!!!
How difficult can it be to calibrate the measuring tool before using it? These are not local club races, they're large events which people are paying for, the organisers should make sure that the distance is correct. No excuses - calibration is quick, easy & simple, and why they would choose not to is beyond me.
I think the problem goes one step further back than that. I think the course measurers have all been diligently calibrating and checking and double-checking their measuring equipment every time it's used. But unfortunately(!), the certified standard mile* course against which all their calibrations go back to, was slightly short.
That's why so many races are affected. Lots of different certified course measurers have been taking their equipment to this measured "mile" as the benchmark for their calibrations.
So is that same system used for measuring London and Berlin for example where world records are regularly set or is there an upgrade version you can go for?
Sounds to me like they need to up their game to check that their calibration measurements are spot on - presumably all over the country ? You'd think all areas use the same mechanism ?
Wouldn't you just be better using a 400m track for calibration rather than measuring a 300 - 800m length using a 30m tape. There are so many potential opportunities to make a mistake. I would've thought they'd use some sort of surveying equipment to measure a calibration course.
How do they measure the 400m track?
Good point. I'm sure they don't use a 30m tape with a few nails.
Add together my halves and my full marathons, I've run less than 20 and 3 of them have officially been declared short. One for poor calibration (Manchester) and two for incorrect placement of turning points. Maybe I've been exceptionally unlucky but I doubt it.
If you'd ran your only sub-2:30 marathon on 10 metres short, you would accept that you never ran a sub-2:30 marathon? Or that you never even completed a marathon that day?
Maybe not "Duckworth Lewis" but I think we should find consensus on what to do in these situations, because short courses will happen year-in, year-out. And as things stand, some people would ignore the effect of a short course, some would be like Seren and say that they never completed a marathon that day and some would say they completed one, but would add on some time to account for the extra 10 or 100 metres or whatever.
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I'm not sure about adding on time. You would like to think these things are so few and far between its not necessary. However where do you draw the line? What if a course is measured correctly, but on the day someone puts a cone in the wrong place. Or, in the case of a race I did, the first 5 turned at an incorrect spot (due to a lead cyclist error) but everyone else ran the full distance. It opens a can of worms to have it as an "official" Pb. On a personal level I'd keep it if I thought it seemed correct. For example over a marathon, even if the course was 350m short, chances are unless you run the race line the whole way you'll have made up some of that 350m anyway.
However if I did a 5k and I could tell its actually closer to 3 miles, as you can I feel, I'd not count that.
But the official results can't, and shouldn't, be changed.